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NVIDIA Announces Portable Gaming Platform

Phoronix: NVIDIA Announces Portable Gaming Platform

At the same time as officially announcing the NVIDIA Tegra 4, the Santa Clara company has also announced an Android-powered open gaming platform in the form of a portable gaming device that uses their latest-generation ARM hardware...

I don't think this thing is in the Ouya market, because the price points are going to be completely different (assuming this thing launches at least as expensive as a Nexus 4). The Shield will, I think, destroy the 3ds and Vita if priced correctly though, and this might be the gateway for Android as a serious gaming platform. Too bad the NDK is still a PITA to use. Java gaming for the masses?

I'm still concerned about the market fragmentation. What Nvidia doesn't seem to get here is developers won't just target Tegra 4, they will cast a wide net and reach as many devices as possible, from the Tegra 3 being much slower to phones with single core A8s or worse. There needs to be some motivation for developers to put the extra effort in to exploit this new chip, and I don't see it from this press conference. I don't think Android gamers with this thing would pay a premium above basically free to get extra graphics juice, the industry has just shifted too far into freemium, and it would take those dollars to motivate devs to target the Shield.

I don't think the Steam over the controller is a really captivating feature, especially since it requires the latest GPU hardware from Nvidia. You can already run a 20' hdmi cable into your living room and use a 360 gamepad (or aftermarket higher range wireless gamepad) on a pc just fine. It is a nice bullet point though, so you don't need to buy that extra controller if you match the pretty silly criteria to use what is effectively proprietary tight GPU integrated VNC.

I don't think the Steam over the controller is a really captivating feature, especially since it requires the latest GPU hardware from Nvidia. You can already run a 20' hdmi cable into your living room and use a 360 gamepad (or aftermarket higher range wireless gamepad) on a pc just fine. It is a nice bullet point though, so you don't need to buy that extra controller if you match the pretty silly criteria to use what is effectively proprietary tight GPU integrated VNC.

You can stream steam games over wlan on this and sitting in the toilet having a shit and playing pc games.

Lol yeah, even though I like the overall idea I find that it looks like someone made it at home out of console spare parts or something, hopefully it's a prototype design. How many Linux based consoles/handhelds will we end up seeing in 2013? Steambox, Ouya, Shield, what's next?

What isn't clear to me, either from the press release or website, how exactly they intend this to be used. It looks too big and awkward to make a good portable system, and it being tied to your WLAN network means that it will lose a great deal of functionality if you try to use it as such. However, the screen is too small to make it a good home gaming system, compared with the standard ~7 in and ~10 in tablets it will need to compete with. And the 3DS top screen is nearly as large as this screen (4.88 in vs 5 in).

Further hurting its home gaming capabilities is that there is no mention of Miracast (wireless display) support, which Android now supports out of the box, which (if true) means you are not going to be able to stream the games wirelessly to your TV. Phones and tablets at the likely high price point will likely support this, and dedicated home gaming systems will use wireless controllers. I doubt people are going to want to be tethered to their TV by and HDMI capable when playing this system when for probably less they can get a tablet with a larger screen, a snap-on controller, and a wireless display dongle for their TV.

There are also some more basic design issues. It looks like the controller will make using the touch screen more difficult, for example.

What isn't clear to me, either from the press release or website, how exactly they intend this to be used. It looks too big and awkward to make a good portable system, and it being tied to your WLAN network means that it will lose a great deal of functionality if you try to use it as such. However, the screen is too small to make it a good home gaming system, compared with the standard ~7 in and ~10 in tablets it will need to compete with. And the 3DS top screen is nearly as large as this screen (4.88 in vs 5 in).

Further hurting its home gaming capabilities is that there is no mention of Miracast (wireless display) support, which Android now supports out of the box, which (if true) means you are not going to be able to stream the games wirelessly to your TV. Phones and tablets at the likely high price point will likely support this, and dedicated home gaming systems will use wireless controllers. I doubt people are going to want to be tethered to their TV by and HDMI capable when playing this system when for probably less they can get a tablet with a larger screen, a snap-on controller, and a wireless display dongle for their TV.

There are also some more basic design issues. It looks like the controller will make using the touch screen more difficult, for example.

It uses stock 4.1, if they ever upgrade it to 4.2, it should support Miracast. They seem to be pushing their own proprietary low latency tunnel though.

I easily see this thing being a good handheld. It has true controller buttons, significantly more power than any other handheld console, and it's game library is going to be absurdly large at launch. Some people have big hands. I also think the screenshots might be making it look larger than it is, the ports on the back make it look smaller.

It uses stock 4.1, if they ever upgrade it to 4.2, it should support Miracast.

That depends on the networking chipset. Not all networking chipsets support miracast.

Originally Posted by zanny

They seem to be pushing their own proprietary low latency tunnel though.

That seems to be a PC -> android tunnel, I have not seen any indication there is a android -> TV tunnel.

Originally Posted by zanny

I easily see this thing being a good handheld.

There is a reason pretty much every popular portable system ever, including game systems, mp3 players, phones, tablets, and laptops, are fairly flat: it is hard to transport a bulky and irregularly-shape object like a game controller. I just don't see this as something someone is going to want to carry around with them very much. It looks very comfortable to play, but very difficult to put in a pocket, bag, purse, or backpack.